Valen's Children
by eye-of-a-cat
Summary: The Earth-Minbari war, seen from another perspective.
1. Default Chapter

**Disclaimer:** Property of JMS and various networks, and borrowed only with the greatest respect.

**Notes: **

This isn't actually an AU, although it might seem like it in places. Since the only Minbari version of the war we see is Delenn's, I think there's room for stories about it that differ from her memories.

Branmer is the priest-turned-warrior whose funeral causes all those problems in the first-season episode _Legacies._

PG-13 for violence.

---

When Delenn sent for me, I did not ask why. Perhaps I knew her answer would make no difference. I was there before the next day was over, waiting for her where the grinding cogs of war seemed to slow and still, and it was only then that I thought to wonder. Not that I asked; not that I needed to.

She greeted me as formally as was appropriate for one in her position and one in mine, and waited until we were alone before pressing her hands into my own. "You came," she breathed, and her eyes held mine before trailing away to all the things that displeased her: the raised line of a scar on my neck, the rougher, darker cloth of clothes made for fighting.

"Of course," I said. There was little use in either of us pretending this was unexpected.

"You know I have always valued your opinion." Her hands were light on my sleeves. "I have - found something, and I wish to know your thoughts on it."

There was a time when half of everything we said was code, the easy abbreviations of thought we all fall into in the company of those who know us well enough to complete them. This did not sound like that. "Where?" I asked her, choosing my question carefully.

"I will show you," she said. And although I should have stood firm and learned enough to prepare myself for whatever would come, I followed.

The room was dark, illuminated only by a bright circle on the floor before our feet and the splinters of light that followed us, for a moment, through the open door. It is impossible to tell space in a place like this. I looked at Delenn, who stood closer to the light than I did, and watched the shadows cast in her headbone magnify each tiny movement. "There is nothing here," I said, waiting for her to prove me wrong.

I heard it before it was there to see, clicks and hisses of what I assumed was breath, although no living thing should breathe like that. "Who are you?" it asked me, in a voice too like my own.

"I am Shai Alyt Branmer, of the Star Riders," I said, feeling Delenn's disapproval burn into my back. "What are you?"

"The sword has no need to claim it is sharp." This came from another direction, and before long two of them stood there, alien shapes in dull armour.

Delenn's hand touched mine. "They are Vorlons," she said.

In all the time I knew her, Delenn told me few things more difficult to believe than this. I had always been able to challenge her when others were shamed into silence, but what could I say to this? I shook my head.

She was looking past me, at the first one. "Show him," she said. "Show him what you showed me."

It split open, and light spilled from the cracks in its shell, flooding around us, bright enough to blind. I could not breathe as its wings began to beat, and it rose above me. I could only watch, frozen, and I saw Delenn's face bathed in its light, and she was smiling, like a child who has seen the stars for the first time.

---

When I was Religious caste, I taught my studets to chant the stories of Valen and those he brought with him. Each of them learnt this from childhood, and each of them would have known that what I saw was a Vorlon and that for love of my people I should heed its words. But they did not see it, and of the two of us who did, one had been leading chants herself since she was barely old enough to be learning them.

We were sitting in her rooms, where the food she prepared lay cold and untouched on plates before us. "Dukhat told me once," she said, "that if I ever doubted my actions I would only need to look into the face of a Vorlon." _You, doubt? _was what I would have said, under other circumstances, and it was what she heard; the corners of her mouth quirked into a smile. "Dukhat also believed in our responsibility to question ourselves when others will not," she said. "But what if it is the Vorlons we doubt?"

"You do not believe they are Vorlons?"

"Of course they are." It was not the question she had been expecting me to ask. "I do not believe they must always guide us."

"They spoke with Valen."

"But they are not Valen."

Even now, I envied her the easy confidence in her voice. Those called to greatness as children do not see the world as we do. "You did not bring me here to ignore Vorlons for you," I said, far from sure.

There are times when we can afford to be young; there are times when the universe reminds us with a thousand voices that we have too much else to be. Delenn lay down at my side and rested her head in my lap, and said "Tell me of the humans." When I did not answer, she asked me again, twisting to look at me. "Tell me how they die."

I could feel her breath rise and fall beneath my hand. This was how it had always been, she asking me questions no others would ask and I giving her answers no others would hear. It was ridiculous to think she needed protecting from this of all things, Delenn who spoke to us with Dukhat's voice, who led us into war with the wisdom and strength of Valen himself. Already they spoke of her legacy. And yet, I could not find in myself the cruel obedience to tell her of any of the lives I had ended. "Quickly," I said. "They are not strong." And this was true.

"Do they have souls?"

"All sentient things have souls."

"Animals do not," she said. "Are they more than animals?"

"Little more, perhaps. But little enough."

"Then perhaps their souls are little more than animals."

"The universe is never lessened when it divides itself," I said. "Why are you asking me this?"

"Because you never agreed with me." Her hand found mine without looking, and she pressd it below her throat, her fingers warm even though my glove. "Tell me I am wrong."

"Will you believe it?"

"No. Tell me anyway."

It was not possible I had forgotten anything about her, not the dusk-grey in her headbone or the clear, cold mirrors of her eyes. It was not possible I would ever be anything that was not her vision of me, or that I would want to be. "There are no Minbari souls," I said, "or alien souls, or Vorlon souls. There is only the universe in all its aspects, and it is only our arrogance and pride which stops us from seeing this."

"Then is it not as great a crime to kill these humans as it would be to kill a Minbari?"

"Souls do not determine worth." And my mind swam with images of the dead and dying, of Minbari tortured past sanity at alien hands, of blood mingling with the rain on distant worlds. I wanted to push her away and go back to my ship, and pretend we had never spoken. "Do you want me to bring you one to kill yourself?"

She frowned, puzzled rather than angry. The cold metal of understanding had always been malleable to her, twisted as easily into an ornament as a waeapon under her diamond-hard gaze.

"What did the Vorlons tell you?" I said. But she would not answer, and I never asked why.

---

The war went on. Our enemies were not strong, but they were numerous, scattered across the galaxy like a handful of seeds that grow twisted and dark from wherever they fall. They clung to the bare rock of dead moons, they tunnelled into sand and snow, they hid among other aliens with no shame or pride in themselves. Sometimes they fought us, flinging their primitive ships at our cruisers one after another; sometimes they ran, or tried to. There was no way of predicting which. A dozen of them would stand to face us even when we outnumbered them in the hundreds, after their own warships had turned tail and fled.

Even light-years distant, Delenn's image was as bright on my ship as it was on Minbar. "They have no conviction," she said, and we listened. "They have no cause. They only strike out blindly, destroying whatever they can reach."

I led warriors who had not seen aliens before, who had never fought outside the training circle, who reminded me too much of my acolytes. I led warriors who were fighting when I was barely more than an acolyte myself, and surprised most of them by making the only one who spoke his disdain aloud my alyt. They all believed, and they all fought, and I felt each death as I would grieve my own family, for a life given willingly is a greater loss even than one taken by force.

Delenn praised the warrior caste, the faithful soldiers of Valen, who fought and died in Minbar's name against an enemy that would never honour them. Our sacrifice would not be forgotten, she said. And for a moment, I could hear her calling me by my warrior title as well as my name.

There was a time when we believed a colony world was abandoned, the aliens fled before our warships arrived. There was no reason to think otherwise; I know this, as I knew it then. But still I blame myself for sending some of the younger warriors to search the ruins, as I will all my life. When we found them, half were dead and the rest only a mockery of living, blinded and crippled and mutilated in a hundred ways, barely even shadows of their souls remaining. The humans who did this chose to attack rather than hide, giving away their own lives for the chance to torture and kill.

"We are not them," Delenn said, and by now none of us doubted she was Dukhat's successor as well as his voice. "We will never be what they are, and we will not allow the universe to be contaminated by their presence. When their world is ashes and their name only a curse, we will remember this."

The old clan rivalries were laid aside, Fire Wings serving alongside Wind Swords with neither question nor argument, and Moon Shields giving away their own ships to those who had lost the most. On Minbar, three castes spoke with one voice; our children's songs about hands that must fight and sculpt and pray had never been heard so often, or meant so much. We were one people, one soul, and the strength of our faith would be enough to cast light even where the universe itself grew dark.

"We are better now than we have ever been," Delenn said. "You must not doubt."

---


	2. 2

I began to measure time in deaths. When Delenn next sent for me, so many had passed that it seemed the universe would soon be empty of anything but our fury and their hate. I saw the Grey Council ship surrounded by its guards, and I wondered what the humans had thought before they killed Dukhat, and what they would think if they walked with me now.

She was arguing with two others when I arrived. Beneath a bow I could not see their faces, but I heard the accusations of cowardice and slaughter, barbed with words not usually spoken aloud: Shadows, Rangers, Z'ha'dum.

When she saw me, she ordered the Warrior Satai at her side to leave. His objection, directed more to the other than her, was dismissed almost before it passed his lips. "I said get _out_, Coplann," she fired. "Branmer will speak for the Warrior caste."

"He will speak for you," the third one said. The controlled syllables of defiance reminded me of my alyt.

Delenn ignored him. Coplann bowed to her and left, and it was not until he had gone that she introduced me to the other - Lenonn, _anla'shok na_. "But do not speak of Shadows," she said. "Nowhere but here, and no time but now."

"Then what should we speak of?"

"Nothing," Lenonn said, watching Delenn with guarded eyes. "We must listen."

And we did. We listened in silence and doubt, hearing Dukhat's words say the same, terrible thing again and again and again: _the humans are needed, the humans must be our allies_.

"He didn't know," Delenn said, later. "He couldn't know. That they should be worse than animals, worse than murderers - he would never have thought any creatures to be this terrible."

"No doubt they would say the same of us," Lenonn muttered.

I said nothing to either of them. I looked down at my hands, in the black warrior gloves that had once seemed so alien, and thought of Dukhat. The child born with his soul would grow up in a universe where humans were nothing more than a memory.

Lenonn wanted to arrange one meeting with them, offering peace. Delenn argued that they would not understand, and appealed to me to tell him what they did to prisoners, but he would not be dissuaded. "Dukhat told us to do this," he said, his voice steady against the force of her anger. I doubt she would ever have relented if I had not offered to arrange this meeting myself. As it was, she was caught enough off balance by shock or anger to let him win.

"What if they kill you?" she demanded as he was leaving.

"Then do not avenge my death." He did not look back.

---

They did kill him. Delenn's anger turned quiet and cold, although she let his murderers go. It barely mattered - soon they would be dead anyway, and the rest of their people with them. I stood at her side as she discussed war strategies, and in the last hours before I returned to my ship, alone in her quarters, I cradled her head against my chest and gave her what answers I could. We had seen no Shadows with the humans, no sign of them, and if they had become this way through Shadow influence, then we must clean the universe from their presence as the Vorlons had taught us to do a thousand years before.

"The Vorlons no longer speak to me," she said.

And in this moment, even that did not seem to matter.

---

Many more warriors died before it was ended. The humans fought us with all they could, with a strength fuelled by hatred and minds blind to any greater cause. It took many more dead worlds and burning ships before I began to understand why the Vorlons had chosen these as our allies, and even then I thought the Shadows could find better use for them.

My warriors never faltered in their bravery or their devotion. I watched the young ones grow older, far older than they should, each new death a line on their face, and still they fought with as much strength as they had before. They knew as much about the humans as I did, now; each battle was routine, each new victory was another heavy step closer to the end none of us questioned would come. Years had passed since Dukhat's death, and we were not the people he had known.

Delenn still spoke to Minbar, and we still heard her. She reminded us of Valen, and the wars of our past; she no longer needed to tell us we should not doubt.

Workers built ships to replace those we had lost, so fast and so many that our enemies woudl never see us falter. Religious led us in conviction that our actions were not ours alone, that the universe must worked through us to create and understand itself. And we warriors fought the enemy until they died in their thousands before they could strike a single one of us down. Every Minbari fought, in their own place; even our children learnt chants of justice and purity.

And so it continued, until we reached Earth.

---

We were still one people and one voice when they surrender order came. We obeyed as one, even though we could hear the sounds of a whole beginning to shatter into its parts as the warriors laid down their arms. The Nine gave no reason, and I went to find Delenn, determined for the first time to ask her why.

She was kneeling on the floor of Dukhat's sanctum, crying. All my words were gone. I think it took her some time to notice me - time did not seem to matter, then, and I paid no attention. I sat beside her and touched her face, feeling her tears against my skin.

She took my hands between hers. "You are Religious again," she said, turning my palms upwards as though the gloves had hidden them all my life.

I shook my head. "I am asking this for the Warrior caste."

Her sobs had almost stilled now, her breath steadying. "I will not tell the Warrior caste," she said. "But I will tell you. The Vorlons were right, all those years past. The humans share our souls. In destroying them, we destroy ourselves."

I let her words sound in my mind over and over again, until emptiness showed itself to be certainty. "That is true whether they share our souls or not," I said.

She did not disagree with me. We stayed together in the moment that Minbar began to tear apart, in the only peaceful place our madness had left, and she told me of the Vorlons, and prophecy, and a role she could no longer fulfil.

"After what you have done," I said. "After what we have done. If the Shadows win -"

"Yes." I had never heard her speak so quietly. "But I doubted, and I cannot lead us now. Even the most terrible thing I did would not stop me from doing what I am required to do, if I was certain. But I doubted. How can I forget this? And how can I continue, remembering?"

I twined my fingers through hers, kissed the faint mark of the triluminary on her forehead. "I will remember for you," I said.

And when she returned to her place among the Nine, and began once again to see the universe and all its past and present as she once had, looking to me as often as to the Vorlons to give strength to her vision, I did.


End file.
